


the beginning of forever

by Saraste



Series: Femslash February 2018 [1]
Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Fluff, Established Relationship, F/F, Femslash February, Lucy doesn't care about your gender expectations, POV - Mina Murray, Victorian Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 00:39:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13535991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: They warned her that Lucy was changed beyond recognition, but Mina knew better.





	the beginning of forever

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Femslash February 2018 using prompt 1.first meeting from [this list.](https://tmblr.co/Zpa2ut2UXyg-c)
> 
> The setting is thus: some things, like Mina going after Jonathan into Transylvania, don't happen, Lucy doesn't die and the girls run away to live happily ever after.
> 
> When I was writing this I actually forgot the names of Holmwood and Morris, and had to look them up later, which is... well, it is what it is, but a bit embarrassing, especially since I've read the novel through at least thrice for my MA thesis...
> 
> Unbeta'd.

Based on what she has heard from the men, Mina didn’t think she’d even recognize Lucy when she met her like she was now for the first time.

But to Mina she had changed little.

In that distinction lay the difference between the male gaze and her female gaze, for, to Mina, Lucy had always been more than what the men in both their lives saw, what any men saw when they looked at Lucy. Mina found it laughable that the likes of Dr Seward, Arthur Holmwood or Quincey Morris, men who had known Lucy for a season and less, would dare say they  _ knew  _ her, when they didn’t know her at all, and never would, now. And to hear doctor Van Helsing tell her that the Lucy whom Mina had known was dead, when that medical man had never even took the time to know Lucy properly, Mina couldn’t trust in the words of a man like that.

Now Lucy was free, free to their eyes to grasp it, even when she had always been free, if hiding it from stupid men who thought they could truly cage a woman with propriety and rules of a society which would have fallen down without women. If women weren’t there to keep house and home intact, to give of themselves so men could think they were really in charge, there would be no society. Now when Lucy had shaken off those expectations, now was the moment she was revealed to her suitors as she had always been and they only had one solution to it: try and kill her.

_ Mina had always known Lucy was a wild thing. _

She had read it from the wild tinkle of Lucy’s eye when they had first met at school, two bright young things, when Mina still had a careless future ahead of her. She had felt it keenly as Lucy’s lips had covered hers in their first tentative kiss, a first to both, a little fumbling but eager once they learned how. They had looked at each other after and known they were each other’s own. They were all each other’s firsts: adept at sneaking off and giddy when sharing a bed over long summer holidays, those halcyon days of youth spent holding hands and sharing a kiss or two by day and more during the long leisurely nights.

Lucy had been fierce in keeping Mina in her life when he future turned to ruin and leisure changed to work and an uncertain governess post, she had never let go.

Now here Lucy was, in the bloom of her fierce freedom, unabashedly gazing at Mina, not caring that her gaze was too bold for men to stomach, had any men been in the room, caring only about what Mina saw and knew. Her eyes were maybe a little more sharp and her features more striking but the confidence of her bearing had always been there and it made Mina shiver down to her bones now, like it always had.

‘You haven’t been eating well again,’ Lucy said, her voice all gentle concern, as it ever had been. Lucy had always been gentle with Mina, even in the fierceness of her devotion.

Mina took a step closer. Lucy was no monster, some wild untamed thing to be put out of her misery, no impure thing that had no right to live. Her voice held no new allure, no pull that had not always been there. Yet Mina was hesitant, for would Lucy feel different, after all, even if she seemed little changed. She wondered how the men who, if they truly loved Lucy, should have done everything in their power to keep her safe and yet now wanted to end her because only now they finally saw her as she had always been and it scared them so much that death was their only solution to her situation.

‘I’ve been worried,’ was all Mina could say, and she had, indeed, worried herself to distraction because of Lucy.

Mina didn’t flinch at Lucy’s hand on her cheek because there was nothing to flinch about, not one sensation which was strange and something else than what she had always known.

‘You shouldn’t have worried about me,’ Lucy told her, her eyes bright, close and consuming. ‘No-one will tell us how to live our lives any longer.’ 

Mina did not ask what she meant, she didn’t care to know and it was not important anyhow, because here Lucy was alive and free and talking of future. ‘I’m yours,’ Mina breathed, reaching out, tangling her fingers in Lucy’s bright copper hair.

Lucy pressed closer, tighter to her body so they were moulded as one, their lips met and Mina lost herself. This wouldn’t be a last meeting, but the beginning of forever.

  
  



End file.
